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Roberto’s kitchen, in a little house on the other side of San Francisco, is a somewhat chaotic location combining food prep and wood-workshop.  From this unremarkable setting, every three weeks or so emerges, like a butterfly, a brand new, unique and handcrafted guitar.  We sat at Roberto’s table and watched as he unwrapped several examples of completed projects and others in progress, and we were charmed. 

Martin plays Bach and Villa Lobos.  I can bash out four chords with or without a campfire.  And now, after an abstinence of ten years, we have become the owners of a family guitar. 

Musically speaking, it is definitely more Campfire’s burning than Villa Lobos, but it is full of character, and we really loved Roberto so, given our price bracket, we decided that we would far rather put bread on his table than spend it on an over-painted, mass produced Chinese orange box. 

Naturally all my music books are stored in a crate in a loft in Hatfield.  And I never had anything in Spanish anyway.  Luckily the internet has seriously come of age since I was last in the habit of learning songs, and there is a whole community of lovely generous people posting free guitar chords for just about any song in any language, key and style (and a few your grandmother might not approve of). 

So the next project will be to cut the nails, toughen up the finger tips and polish up those four chords in time for Scout camp at the end of the year. 

“Granny”, said the little girl.  “Do you have some fruit that I can take to school?  It’s Joni day”. 

“It’s what day?” queried the grandmother. 

“Joni day.  There’s a little boy in first grade called Joni and he always brings fruit to school, so once a week the whole school has to bring a healthy snack like Joni”…

The Joni is my son.  The grandmother, who told me the story this morning, is my English student. 

I’m still trying to decide what learning point I should take from this…

Should we be pondering the irony that we are probably better ambassadors for fruit than we are for the Gospel? 

Or should we be encouraged by the idea that if we quietly model something consistently enough for long enough, then eventually it will have an impact? 

Have I been as consistent for Jesus as I have for bananas? 

“I can’t find my mobile phone, and I am going to be out of the house for three hours this afternoon so if anyone needs to get hold of me, you can try at x place from this o’clock, Y place from that o’clock, or z place from the other o’clock.”   Posted on Facebook. 

It’s a cultural thing.  I understand every one of those words written here, but for the life of me I cannot get my head around the culture of the person who would feel the need to post this. 

Is there something significant going down at their end?  Possibly.  But if it was me, and it was seriously major, I would be in the location of the seriously major thing.  If it was a jump or two lower than seriously major, or if I had no option but to leave for a bit, I would have made sure that the key people would have a proper way of contacting me; borrowed cell phone possibly, and I would share that data privately with those named people. 

Apart from that, the “if anyone…” phrase seems to suggests less a specific crisis than that this person feels a general and on-going need to be available, whenever and for whatever.  So I wonder how far is this writer truly indispensible?  How much of their world might be in danger of collapse as a result of their three hour absence?

If we disregard the possibility that the person may simply hold narcissistic delusions of their own importance, then we are left facing the serious notion that rendering this person incommunicado for three hours really might result in disastrous consequences.  Heck I feel sorry for them already, that’s a huge responsibility that I can’t even take three hours without the universe going to pot around me. 

When I was nineteen, an anonymous someone posted a note on the door of the place where I was working.  It said “Graveyards are full of indispensible people”.  Since then, I’ve come to consider that becoming indispensible is the point where selfishness disguises itself as saintliness.  If my absence of three hours would be enough to induce a potential crisis in those around me, then I probably need to stop and take responsibility for the devastation I would cause if I got run over on the way home and found myself in intensive care for six weeks (or worse).  Yes, it’s great to be needed.  We all need that.  But if my need to be needed is such that my absence would irrevocably cripple someone else’s ability to get on with their life, then I need to stop blocking out the light.  Make some contingency plans, train up a substitute, start bringing through my potential replacements, step back and let others take the applause. 

I know this poor un-consulted Facebook poster, whose post I have taken in vain, hasn’t asked for my advice, but as much for my own benefit as anyone else’s, it would be this: The role of centre of the universe is already eternally occupied.  So chill out and have a beer… when you’ve found your phone. 

The Independent review summed up the 10th series of the Apprentice as the return of the ‘Self-aggrandising nicompoops’  Meanwhile on this side of the pond, the last few days have felt something like juggling all twelve tasks of the Apprentice, combined with the labours of Hercules. 

In addition to the normal stuff of life, working, teaching, parenting etc.,

Installed in the spare bedroom we have the fifteen year old, at short notice because the teens home was rendered unexpectedly without running water (I suspect sabotage but we didn’t go into details).  She has flitted in and out with boyfriend, slept while normal people are awake and vice versa, and grazed her way through anything that might have contained sugar.  Teen.  I’m just not used to them.

Installed in the normally unused back room we have ex-prisoner friend, who is here to make himself useful for a few days so that we have an excuse to pay him.  As we speak he is taking the garage apart, hopefully in a it-has-to-get-worse-before-it-gets-better sort of way. 

The Scouts were selling pizzas in order to start raising money for summer camp.  It was quite hard to persuade them to get motivated in October.  They don’t normally start thinking about summer camp until about two minutes before the event, at about the time when they realise that they haven’t got any money to pay for it.  So it was a bit of a grind, but we sold 62 pizzas in the end. 

Joni had his first competitive swimming event on Saturday morning.  He won his breast stroke heat, and there were medals for everyone. 

I had to gather the paperwork and the rubber stamps in order to sign Danny up for school next year by eight o’clock this morning. 

We supposedly had a district Scout event on Saturday evening, for which we had a couple of planning meetings, but in the end was rained off.  I have rarely been so grateful for the Argentinean culture of “Any hint of rain stops play”. 

We did have a tea and games on Saturday afternoon for the mothers of Scouts, for which I made a cake.

And also a bring and share after church on Sunday evening, for someone’s birthday, for which I made another cake. 

And we are helping one of our Scout mums with a barbecue chicken sale.  The mum need cancer treatment, and in the government healthcare system, treatment comes free, but you have to pay for the medication.  Go figure. 

Meanwhile, I was writing my sermon for Mothers’ Day which was on Sunday.  I started thinking about “Jerusalem Jerusalem”, slid over into Isaiah, and ended up coming to rest in 1 Kings 17 and God feeding the widow feeding Elijah.  And in the event I ditched all my notes and went up to the pulpit with nothing more than my bible.  Which worked fine, apart from the fact that I can no longer read the tiny print from the bible under the poor light at the front of our church!  Options for the future include printing out the passage in larger font, or to start using those reading glasses. 

This weeks tasks include presenting the paperwork to borrow the agricultural college for a Scout event in November.  And writing a talk for a Christian kids’ group on the subject of Halloween.  The more I think about it, the less I care about whether kids dress up in bin bags or not.  So now I need a different line on this if I want any chance of sounding remotely credible.  But right now, I need to go buy a new pump for the fish tank, and then I have an English class to teach. 

The plot thickens like lumpy custard. 

We have spent this week finding out about life in a cash-using society when you don’t have access to cash.  People do use cards here in big places like supermarkets and multi-national petrol stations (although YPF the state-run petrol company won’t accept cards).  But day to day purchases from butcher baker and candlestick maker are strictly cash affairs, as is the paying of the rent.  Since last Friday we haven’t been able to take money out of the ATM system.  We haven’t yet got as far as selling the kids into slavery, but our landlady is becoming antsy. 

We appear to have emerged unscathed from the latest round of ministry politics from which we can’t share details in public, but everything has gone quiet on the Western front at the moment anyway. 

Mission stuff chugs along.  I slipped up to Salta for a few days last week for exec meetings.  It was a nice change to go away on my own, and the meetings were far less arduous than sometimes so there was plenty of time for coffee and a long walk. 

I’m doing battle with 2 Timothy 4 for this Sunday.  It feels a bit like the wall at the three quarter mark of a long distance run; legs hurt and the end isn’t yet in sight.  Although in this case probably more brain than legs.  My four-sermon series has also just become five since the person up next is going to be away for the first Sunday.  But rather than spinning 2 Tim for another week, although there is more than enough scope to do so, I’m thinking I will probably do something random and one-off for Mother’s Day (19th October) possibly involving Isaiah. 

Currently listening to classic Marcos Witt, South America’s answer to Graham Kendrick.  Mexican, Marcos Witt was the mainstay of every church music group when I came here first in the nineties, and remains popular to this day with his mix of original numbers and enlivened versions of trad favourites. 

Yesterday was Joni’s 7th birthday.  We replaced his small second hand bike with an bigger and better second hand bike.  He wanted to take it to school.  We said he should test it out closer to home first.  Ten past seven in the morning found him doing laps around the plaza in order to convince us that he was safe to ride it to school.  He won. 

   

He decided that this year it was important to have his party on the same day as his birthday.  I made a guitar cake.  His friends were all impressed.  Birthday cakes here are normally either round or square with a plastic Spiderman/Disney princess (delete according to gender) stuck on top, so it is easy to generate a response simply by doing something different. 

Last week disappeared into a flurry of activity.  The fourteen – now fifteen – year old announced that she wanted to come and live with us.  That is unlikely to happen for a number of reasons, not all under our control, but it meant that I had to attend two meetings at the teens hostel with support workers and the psychologist to talk about how we can build stronger and healthier links with her.  And then there was just the normal stuff of life, taking and fetching kids, teaching English, feeding people, working with Maxi.  I’m still writing sermons, and there was also a Scout camp this weekend which always involves a couple of days of running around gathering things, planning activities, generating paperwork, and buying food; followed by running around of a different nature, after the kids all weekend.  And then I disappeared into a different sort of flurry; of icing sugar into the wee small hours on Sunday night in order to produce the requested guitar cake ready for the big 7 on Monday morning. 

Here are a few of the things that I am currently thinking about in no particular order…

From some conference notes I scribbled ages ago.  Sew seeds in the lives of individual people.  Currently plugging away on my 2 Timothy sermon series, (and realising that chapter one alone could occupy all four weeks if I choose to let it).  I am struck that while both Jesus and Paul at various times were surrounded by multitudes of people, when it comes to who they really walked alongside, we are talking about a handful of named individual mentees.  And I’m thinking that while doing big stuff is always more impressive on a human level, if we could make a real difference to three people’s lives then we probably will have have achieved more for the kingdom than any attempt to fit seventeen people into the diary before breakfast. 

From the Independent 7th September.  The scientist leading Britain’s response to the Ebola pandemic has launched a devastating attack on "Big Pharma", accusing drugs giants including GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Sanofi, Merck and Pfizer of failing to manufacture a vaccine, not because it was impossible, but because there was "no business case".  This of course is a totally  logical outcome of allowing the market to dictate policy; it makes far better economic sense to focus on long-term drugs for rich people (Prozac, Ritalin) than it does to produce short-term medications to save the lives of people who can’t afford to pay for it.  If we don’t like that, what are we prepared to do to change it? 

This one. http://www.williamwilberforcetrust.org/radical-hospitality   and this one. http://www.theveryworstmissionary.com/2014/06/3-tangible-ways-to-stop-sex-trafficking.html  I’m pondering on radical hospitality, what a fantastic phrase.  It took me a while to come to a decision for various reasons, but I’m supporting https://www.theexodusroad.com/ 

The Missing Billions: The UK Tax Gap estimates that 25 billion pounds is lost through tax evasion every year, of which 12 billion comes from (or rather, doesn’t come from) the 700 largest corporations.  Meanwhile the UK department of work and pensions estimates that for 2013-14 The total benefits overpayments due to fraud and error across all benefits is £3.3 billion.  So even if we were 100% charitable to the UK government and assume that the entire benefit loss is due to fraud rather than error, we can still see that benefit fraud is but small change compared to tax evasion.  The interesting questions are; why does the UK population seem better able to tolerate a higher level of stealing from the system by the rich than by the poor.  And is this phenomenon peculiar to the UK or have we hit on something about the human condition?  And wherever that philosophy might take us, the practical issue is this: you can carry on buying cheap goods from those 700 corporations, or you can lament the cuts to public services.  But not both. 

And finally.  Why is it that my new phone, which will probably make you a cup of coffee if you swiped the screen in the right direction, is completely incapable of producing anything other than a pathetic squeak when a text message arrives.  My old, sadly deceased, un-smart phone had no problem with producing a variety of sounds of different lengths and volumes according to the preference of the user.  I am told my new phone can be trained, but only if I go to a website, find the sound I like, download it, add it to the phone, and then select it.  Personally I’m struggling to imagine how adding several extra steps of work in order to render the machine fit for the purpose it was bought, could possibly be indicative of any sort of technological progress. 

A new computer in the house reminds me of how clothing worked when we were kids; enter a new coat and everyone else’s stuff shunted down a child.  Martin bought himself a new laptop when we were in England (higher spec, more choice, and better priced than Argentina).  So, I inherit the older laptop, and the even older desk-top, which had previously been Martin’s old desktop and more recently my computer-shared with the kids, has become the kid machine.  We (that’s the royal we, more accurately, Martin) rebuilt it with a minimum of software mostly for film-watching and game-playing, and shuffled it across onto a trolley on its own.  And now I have my desk back. 

I spent most of a morning devoiding it of sweet wrappers, Lego bricks, and assorted other juvenile accoutrements, followed by sorting nine months worth of filing (can’t always blame the kids for everything),  and lastly cleaning away the intermediate layers consisting of paint fallen from the ceiling and the plaster which is dropping off the walls. 

One of the things that surprises me for a few days every time we go back to the UK is that you can open a tap and hot water comes out.  Just like that.  So, uncluttered by notions of health and safety, we have taken ownership of this new shower unit, affectionately known as a widow maker:

Note the trailing flex, loosely stapled to the wall above the tiles, dangling across the plug socket, with the bath just a few inches below. The shower unit itself has an old fashioned kettle filament inside to heat the water.  Fill it up, plug it in, walk away, come back twenty minutes later, unplug (forgetting that bit is likely to render your partner a widow/er), hope it’s not too hot or you’ll have to go away again until it cools down, shower.  Done.  

Your perspective on this will probably depend on your context.  The clipboard wielding health and safety guys would have it down in a jiffy.  At another extreme, the 750 million people in the world who don’t have clean water to drink would be scandalised that we’re using it to wash in.  Our take is that having survived the last few winters without hot water in the house, we think we’re going up in the world. 

I have just put up some sermon notes on Philippians 2 (Filipenses in Spanish) from last week.  You can find them in Spanish under the sermons tab above.  I got brave and for the first time ever I didn’t write out my entire sermon word for word (which probably renders the notes less useful to the unsuspecting but what ho.)  I think it probably went better as a result, almost definitely sounded more natural because I wasn’t reading it out.  But it was a bit nerve wracking trying to keep remembering what I’d thought I was going to say about each part – hard enough in English when at least I have the advantage of all the vocabulary to hand.  My next challenge coming up is to deliver a short sermon series.  I’m used to my invitations to preach arriving at six month intervals so it is probably going to be good discipline to have to deliver something good quality three or four weeks running, and to give the whole series a coherent shape.